My final class is scheduled for next Monday, which is both a bummer and a relief. I’ll miss working with my students, but I won’t miss my adjusted schedule at all–and there’s a ton of work coming at WRI. There was also some shuffling around of classes last week, so I won’t be teaching the capstone class they had me scheduled for, but they swapped it out with a second-level typography class that sounds like fun.
We have a new front door as of yesterday! The old red steel door is gone, replaced with a new (faux) 6/6 windowed security door. It’s wonderful how much light comes in through the window now, and every time I came down the stairs this morning I thought the front door was open.
Last night I went out for beers with some designer friends at the Judge’s Bench, as part of a long-delayed effort to get together, and it was a very good time. Five of us met up from different circles around the Baltimore design scene, and it was fun to put history and shared experiences together. It’s funny how much overlap we all have together.
I’m taking a long lunch this afternoon to walk up to the Capitol lawn with a 70-200 lens and a tripod to shoot some pictures: The Arsenal of Democracy Flyover is scheduled for today at noon and I’m right in the sweet spot: They are flying directly down the Mall, over the Capitol, and banking off to the south from there. If I’m on the north side of the lawn, I’ll be in perfect position to get some great shots.
This weekend I caught up on a pile of things that I’d been meaning to get to over the last few months:
- Hauled 60 cubic feet of mulch from the Home Depot to the hedge, front bed, side bed, and rear bed of the house.
- Weeded and raked said hedge and beds, bagged up the product, and hauled it all to the edge of the driveway (18 bags or so). Mulched everything.
- Hauled the crib to Christi & Glenn’s, and picked up our spare chairs and stepladder
- Fixed and sealed the gutter on the garage
- Cleaned out and organized about 50% of the garage in preparation for the summer
- Hooked up the hitch wiring to the CR-V
- Mixed cement and sealed up the funky hole in the brick under the front stairs
It doesn’t sound like much on paper, but I’m wiped out this evening.
We made it through the storm pretty well on Saturday, although the house was fucking freezing. This month’s ~10˚ overnight temperatures have really illustrated just how poorly insulated the Lockardugan Estate is despite all my attempts to the contrary. The first floor becomes pretty much uninhabitable after 8PM, and the kitchen is like a meat locker (there is no heating in the kitchen; we removed it during the remodel in a desperate bid for cabinet space).
Sunday I spent the morning digging out. A freakish upswing in temperature meant I was out in a fleece and light gloves, sweating in the sunlight. After I got the sidewalks done, I came in and made bacon egg & cheeses for the family (NOM NOM NOM), and then went back out to finish the cars. The Accord is suffering from an old no-cranky battery so I jumped it and ran it for a while, but next weekend I’ll definitely pick up a new one. After that chore was done I took Finn over to the school for some sledding. Mama found a great Wham-O sled at the bargain store a while back and we put it to the test. Strangely, we had the whole hill to ourselves.
The afternoon was spent in the den, creating castles with Legos, while Mama put together venison steaks with duck-fat fried potatoes and fresh green beans for dinner. All in all, it was a great day.
We had the neighbors over for drinks and dessert on Saturday in front of a roaring fire, and Sunday morning was a bit rough for your correspondent. Having finished the local Christmas purchasing the day before, there wasn’t much to be done other than loaf around in our PJ’s, watch football, and visit the library (how awesome is it having the library within 5 minutes’ walking distance of the house? VERY AWESOME) so we took full advantage of the slacking.
I did finish moving and updating the wiring in the basement to the punchdown block, which makes a huge difference at the foot of the stairs. I then made some short 12″ patch cables and straightened up the router wiring, but the next big step will be installing a castoff gigabit switch I got at work and linking all of the wired ports in the house to one machine.
I also put a new restaurant rack up against the east wall to get a bunch of random stuff up off the floor, and there’s a growing pile of trash and recycling that need to get hauled away. The whole basement is getting an overhaul, in fact. The ice room is going to get cleaned out and organized. My scrap wood pile is being relocated in there, and I’m building a hanging rack along the front wall for our new dining room chairs.
Our front stairs have been an ugly mess since before we moved into the house. Originally overgrown by huge car-sized shrubs, we waited for years until getting up the nerve to clean things up. First we hacked the bushes apart and dragged them out with help from a jackhammer, shovels, chains, and the Scout, which only uncovered how poorly they were constructed (unfinished brick on either side, sloppy concrete work, and mismatched materials).
The weekend before Thanksgiving I bought a sledgehammer, dug out my masonry chisels, and got to work. Frighteningly, the only thing holding them together was the concrete adhesive I’d applied to the larger chunks back in 2009 before we hosted R&K’s baby shower.
As I tore them off and broke apart the larger chunks, I realized that as lousy as they’d been constructed, they covered up an even larger problem: the foundation under the doorway is open to the elements, meaning the crawlspace under the right side of the porch would be exposed if I tore the whole thing off. So, I figured I’d leave the first layer standing, shore up the side where it was open, and let Mr. Scout come in to build over the whole thing.
His first day’s progress looked great; he put a header on the sill plate, dug two footers, and built the platform under the door.
The second day looked even better! With a little help, he got the second footers in, risers installed, and the whole deck framed out for use, knowing that it was going to snow the day before Thanksgiving and he wouldn’t be able to work on it. We spent some extra money to use Trex as our flooring material, and it looks great so far. I also spent some money on new light fixtures and installed them, and I think they go much better with the look of the house than the old plastic coach lights we inherited.
He came back yesterday and got the railings cut down, sheathed, and in place so the whole thing comes together nicely. Additionally he was able to reuse some of the leftover aluminum siding we saved from the side to cover both of the holes left by the old iron railing, which really cleans up the facade. (I’m going to spend some time this weekend hauling the old concrete away from the front of the house and filling in the holes).
Next up is the front door. We spec’ed out a twelve-lite over a single panel, which will open up the front hallway to light, stay architecturally true to the rest of the house, and make the whole entrance much friendlier. We might be able to get it in before Christmas, but I’m not going to hold anyone to that.
This whole project has me thinking about the brick I’ve got squirreled away under the back porch. This spring I want to rip up the rest of the concrete, put a solid substrata down, and replace the walkway with a careful herringbone pattern from the front sidewalk to the stairs to warm up the front of the house.
- Ran the Scout up for the first time in two weeks. With the battery conditioner I bought this fall, there’s plenty of cranking power, so the trick has been learning how to prime the carb correctly. She’s running well when she warms up, and she feels completely different with the top on. It was dry enough that I wasn’t worried about salt, so it was nice to sneak out and home again in the sunshine.
- Started reorganizing the basement to fit our stuff better. I moved a large shelf from the center of the floor to one of the side walls and it opens the whole center area up to more sunlight and space. I’m going to buy a second shelf and continue organizing this week while I dig out the Christmas gear from the iceroom.
- Organized and shortened cable runs and our punchdown block. When I ran network and coax cable through the house in 2003-2005, I left several feet extra on each line so that I could orient the block in the right space. Fast forward ten years and it had become a rat’s nest, both up in the ceiling and over the network board. So I pulled all the extra out to the wall, disconnected and re-ran some of the hairballs up in the ceiling, bundled the main runs of cable together, and started shortening ends at the block. Most of the coax I ran is unused so that will get tucked back up into the ceiling. I’ve been putting this off for years, but now that I’m working on it, I’m happier than I should be to be working on it.
- Took in a friend’s opening at Union Brewery, across the street from my old office in Hampden. Union makes some very tasty beer locally, and we got an unguided tour of their space as well as pours of their latest seasonals. I stayed and caught up with a bunch of friends until 10:30 and then found my way home over an all-too-familiar route.
- Used a $12 laser temperature gauge (thanks, Amazon!) to discover the microclimates within each of our rooms; We’re losing heat in most of the places I already suspected–the weight pockets on either side of our windows, around old doors, the floor of our pantry, some of the sill plates in the basement.
Here’s where we are as of this morning. One layer of primer down on the wood, and it’s looking good. There’s some slight warping on the right side, which I need to look into–probably a quick hand sanding to buff down the edges will do. The walls are all ready for a couple of final coats of paint as well, and it’s nice to have the cracks all but gone from view.
I brewed the Irish Stout last night and set it up in a bucket to sit for a couple of months; I got within .002 of the original gravity target, got it chilled to exactly 75°, and the yeast started working sometime overnight.
Part of owning a home is the reality of constant repairs, and part of that is seeing the flaws in things you’ve worked on in the past. One of the things that’s been bothering me for years is the way the edges of our mantel haven’t matched up with the rest of the facade as a result of the way I built it. Now that the rest of the room has a clean coat of paint, the mantel stood out in even greater relief, and temperature and humidity changes have cracked the bondo I used to cover the seam several years ago.
When I put it together I didn’t allow for the top to be wider than the rest of the box, due to changes in the plan while it was being constructed. I’ve been thinking about fixes for this issue for eight years now, and I bought a sheet of veneer from Amazon last week with the aim of fixing it before Thanksgiving.
The first step was to sand down the face with a random orbital sander, which went easily enough. I figured I’d simply apply a layer of glue to the box and then lay the veneer over top of it, then place bracing across the face to hold it in place. Using our heavy-as-bricks coffee table/chest, I built bracing out of 2″x3″ and put things in place.
After letting that sit for about an hour, I checked on it and was alarmed to find a huge bubble in the middle, as well as warping on each end. Fearing I’d never be able to get it off after it dried fully, I pulled the whole sheet off in two pieces and started researching plan B.
Several YouTube videos presented a different solution: the unorthodox approach of spreading the glue over both pieces, letting it dry, and then using a clothes iron to heat and activate the glue. So, I went back out to get different glue and set things up. First, I sanded the box clean again, then applied two coats of glue to both pieces with a rubber Bondo spreader.
In the meantime, I put four new IKEA chairs together, which should supply sturdier seating for our Thanksgiving guests. For years, we’ve been using a mixture of two old rickety oak chairs and our desk chairs for dinner, which is unappealing and unsafe. The new chairs are remarkably similar to our current chairs–they look like slightly shorter cousins, which is better than we could have hoped for.
Then it was time to bust out the iron. Starting at the center, I worked my way out to the left and then the right, using a damp rag to add some steam to the wood. It worked out better than I’d hoped. Once I went around the edges to make sure there was nothing peeling upwards, I hit the whole thing with 150 grit paper and cleaned up both the veneer and the woodwork around it.
Then I used my chop saw to trim both overhanging edges so that the veneer was as close to the box as possible. Using a piece of sandpaper stapled to a long flat board, I smoothed the edge out flush to the box.
I did some more cleaning with sandpaper and a sharp chisel, and then used caulk along the top and the bottom to seal the edges. I’m going to let it sit and cure overnight, and then hit it with primer tomorrow evening before applying two coats of trim paint to match the rest of the mantel.
While I was working in the area, I sanded down a bunch of raised cracks in the wall on either side of the mantel bumpout and hit them with a skim coat of drywall mud; they’ll get sanded smooth and painted at the same time as the box.
The other thing on the menu for tomorrow evening is some brewing. I bought an Irish Stout and another session IPA, and I think I’ll get the stout working first for Christmas and then do the IPA to replace what’s in the cooler. I haven’t had two beers on tap since early summer, which is a sad state of affairs, but it’s mostly due to the last of the Belgian Dubbel taking up space. I may just bottle the last of that and clear the keg out.
I finished running wiring in the garage last week so that one switch inside the door now controls four lights, which makes a huge difference out there. It’s easier to be out there and not trip over extension cords hanging everywhere, and it makes me want to rip the rickety workbench out completely and start building a newer, better one with storage and organization. I’ve got some stuff to move out of there (an old cast iron sink, a box of slate shingles, old dumbbells) and some roof repairs to make (shingles on the far side are disintegrating) but it’s getting a lot more usable.
Finally, there’s something exciting afoot professionally, the details of which I’ll keep quiet until I know more.
It doesn’t show up in the user manual, and there’s no mention of it on the front of the machine, but it turns out there’s a drain plug at the bottom of Kenmore front-loading washing machines. We found about $3 in change and a bunch of lint down there. Glad to know the thing isn’t broken.
Last week was quiet but full of activity. Work is moving along briskly, and there’s more work coming in than we can handle. One big change is that I’m now officially a Creative Director, with a merit raise and yearly bonus—something that actually happened the week before last, but superstitiously, I wanted to have my business cards made up first.
We wrapped up a big project in the house on Saturday, after weeks of jumbled furniture and chaos in the main living space. The walls in the living room are now white, and the bumpout over the chimney is a bright blue and the ceiling a very light blue. All of this took several weeks because the white paint we’d bought to cover the brown wasn’t going on evenly, so I had to roll a bright white over top of that. The ceiling took two weekends because it’s hard to roll a finish coat on with no direct sunlight to see where the bad patches are.
I wired a second breaker in to the panel in the garage, ran a line to a switch by the door, and started putting outlets in along the ceiling. So far there’s one switched light and two outlets, and maybe if the weather warms up just a touch I’ll put on my long johns and go out there one evening this week and get the other four lights hung.
Finn’s final soccer game was on Saturday, and instead of getting clobbered by the Yellow Butterflies they merely got beaten. But who’s keeping score? They all had fun, and we met some more kids in the neighborhood, including the other Finley.
Also, I took Finley out for pizza and a movie on Saturday night: We saw Big Hero 6 and had a blast together at a little movie theater down in Arbutus, which is surprisingly cheap and current in its selection (they were playing Interstellar in 3D the same evening). The movie was very good–I’d say it wasn’t quite as good as How To Train Your Dragon, but the characters were all well-drawn and the story was propulsive.